Why can't those GNOME Devs copy one thing from microsoft windows???

[daimaru]

damn i know i have bitched about this before, but i still can't see why there aren't more people out the that are annoyed by this. Microsoft copies all the good stuff from apple or linux distros, so why can't the linux devs do the same thing. The one and only good thing about windows is the fact that the microsoft explorer / window manager (nautilus, tunar ... whatever for linux) has the ability to drag select files. Even drag select them in detail view by clicking on the file size or last accessed properties.

Am I the only lazy person who likes to not always have to click the friggin shift or ctrl button to select multiple files in an open window ??? C'mon it must be soooo easy to change this in nautilus or whatever manager one uses. By the way tunar and kde manager do kinda do this , but still not as good as the windowsssss one. (clicking on last time accessed or file size and draggin out that marqee selection :( )

[frup]

Sounds like a waste of time. Do you have a working patch?

[aaaantoine]

I must be missing something. I can select multiple files in a window just fine without hitting ctrl or shift.

[munkyeetr]

I must be missing something. I can select multiple files in a window just fine without hitting ctrl or shift.

Not in List View, only in Icon View.

[aaaantoine]

Not in List View, only in Icon View.

Ahh... I see. Is it possible that this is a limitation of GTK, rather than a missing feature from Nautilus?

[madjr]

Not in List View, only in Icon View.

why use list view?

but i agree... if u ask for it maybe they'll implement it in gnome 2.26

If you don't ask or contribute a patch u will never see the feature.

also i want these sweet plugins:

cool youtube videos showing off what Nautilus 2.22 can do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmqGc2Il34M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac0Ca0SSGzQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ5YyMsLtyE


I want !!

[blithen]

why use list view?

but i agree... if u ask for it maybe they'll implement it in gnome 2.26

If you don't ask or contribute a patch u will never see the feature.

also i want these sweet plugins:

cool youtube videos showing off what Nautilus 2.22 can do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmqGc2Il34M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac0Ca0SSGzQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ5YyMsLtyE


I want !!
If you have have hardy you have 2.22.2 o.o

[daimaru]

why use list view?
lol how can you stand any other view than detailed or list view ??? but i guess that's a user preference. I for one could never use icon view to navigate to anywhere on my filesystem. But as you said I guess I'll have to ask those friendly gnome devs to maybe add this feature in future.

[FuturePilot]

why use list view?

but i agree... if u ask for it maybe they'll implement it in gnome 2.26

If you don't ask or contribute a patch u will never see the feature.

also i want these sweet plugins:

cool youtube videos showing off what Nautilus 2.22 can do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmqGc2Il34M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac0Ca0SSGzQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ5YyMsLtyE


I want !!


If you have have hardy you have 2.22.2 o.o
I can't seem to do that :(

[Lostincyberspace]

How About this from E17 first My favorite feature from it moving backgrounds.

Here is a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10kg2aSB8q4&feature=related

[Jammin80503]

I can't seem to do that :(

Open up the file browser, go to view -->side pane or press f9
At the top of the pane, you can pick the mode.

[jrusso2]

lol how can you stand any other view than detailed or list view ??? but i guess that's a user preference. I for one could never use icon view to navigate to anywhere on my filesystem. But as you said I guess I'll have to ask those friendly gnome devs to maybe add this feature in future.

I have to use detail for everything except like graphics files.

[FuturePilot]

Open up the file browser, go to view -->side pane or press f9
At the top of the pane, you can pick the mode.

It doesn't show any info on the file that I highlight.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Indeed, looks like that feature is waiting. I remember reading about it a while ago... 2.24, probably. I hope it works out!
(Thanks for the videos).

By the way, if you're interested in GNOME's bleeding edge stuff, I recommend reading the GNOME Planet (http://planet.gnome.org/) ;)

As for the OP, a couple things:

First off, nice idea
I suggest you refrain from using the phrase "like Windows". It often draws flames, and is unnecessary in this case. Many operating systems do and have done this.
The tone of your post suggests to me that you are suggesting the people behind GTK to be incapable of or unwilling to implement this. Tone of writing is rather a subjective thing, though, but judging by some responses, that seems to have been what other people have read as well. No pressure; just thought I would point that out!
Now that I've gone and sounded all negative, I reiterate, worthy thought. I'm not being a grouch, I promise!


As for the idea. A big issue that springs to mind for me is that this could damage the consistency of drag and drop with GNOME, and make the user interface confusing in general. Drag and drop in GNOME is great right now, because a user can (ideally) click and drag any logical object to pull it somewhere else; selecting stuff only happens if he clicks in white space. Pretty consistent, and really great for being able to build an integrated interface around drag and drop; users simply expect it, and see it happen (or not) when they try. There is no variety about the click and drag movement, making it perfectly learnable.

With your suggestion applied, the behaviour of selection boxes would be reliant on two variables: Whether it is possible to drag items from the widget, and whether it is possible to select multiple items. Keep in mind as well that the user does not know ahead of time which of these are possible without attempting both. There is also the detail of whether a list box has more than one column.

I will go over a few possible cases...


Can drag, can select multiple, many columns:
The case you are looking at in particular. Here, we run the risk of two identical mouse movements doing two different things. Okay, have it select items when cursor is not on the primary field, drag item when out of the primary field. Easy; the user could learn that behaviour and expect it with all list boxes like that.
Note that this foreshadows problems already, as the user is learning what can only be shakey ground: two identical motions for the same widget that, based on a subtle difference, do two different things.

Can drag, can select multiple, one column:
Problem! Here we have to resort to strange, strange behaviour. The drag and drop behaviour of Microsoft's Excel (all cells are self contained so it sort of counts) is a fine example of where this breaks down. Whether a mouse movement is dragging or selecting is controlled by what looks like witchcraft. Generally, that is whether the mouse lies inside the widget or just barely outside it. This behaviour is not consistent with the last case. To be honest, I have never figured out for sure how Microsoft implemented this, but it plain does not work.

Can drag, can not select multiple, many columns:
Here we would want a drag from anywhere to trigger proper drag and drop behaviour, consistent with how GTK was previously. Okay... new user tries to select many items as he expected from a list box with the first case, instead moves an important item to the trash bin. Oops.


I suppose one fix would be adding an area of whitespace somewhere, which would make this consistent with the current feel of dragging versus selecting. Hate to be only destructive here, but at that point I am out of ideas. Anyone have thoughts where it could go without being horrible, and still being learnable?

[FuturePilot]

Indeed, looks like that feature is waiting. I remember reading about it a while ago... 2.24, probably.

Hopefully. It looks like a really cool feature. :)

[daimaru]

The tone of your post suggests to me that you are suggesting the people behind GTK to be incapable of or unwilling to implement this.

My intention was not to insult anyone lest the gnome devs, because I really like their work. My tone may have been misleading.

Mr Pickelsoworth quite frankly I did not quite understand what you did not understand about the functionality, so I will try to explain again via an example.

Example:
If I have an open folder (in details - list view) that contains say 100 .jpg files. Most likely, even if I maximize my window, I will have a scrollbar because not all the files fit into the active window.

Now for instance if i wanted to create a folder within this folder I would normally under windows (and I do apologize for mentioning it, but there are things that are good about it) I would right click beside the file name column (for example the size, type or date modiefied fields) and I would get my right click menu with the option to create a new file or folder etc.

If i do that in nautilus I select the file... so the only way for me to do the above action is through the nautilus file menu. I know maybe this does not bother people, but I do like this functionality and I am not disrespecting any developers for not including it, I just said that I would love to have that functionality in gnome too, because why can't the linux community copy some good stuff from microsoft if they do the same :)

I have no idea how to solve this, but I would suggest just changing the hit area of the window manager to just respond to clicking on the actual filename (bounding box set to the size of the textarea kind of thing) I know nothing of gnome development or nautilus, but it seems that this should not be too hard if you programmed the thing. I am a programmer and I sure could change something this trivial in one of my progs.

To finish off this post, I was not trying to insult gnome dev's (but reading my own post again including the title I would probably think the same), I guess I was just a bit pissed while i wrote it because I just had to copy some files and was to lazy to use 2 hands :)

[Ub1476]

We need tabs... Pcmanfm has had tabs for ages and is developed by one man. And it's his hobby.

I can't live without tabs.

[SuperSon!c]

How About this from E17 first My favorite feature from it moving backgrounds.

Here is a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10kg2aSB8q4&feature=related

wow, that is pretty neat, although that "bling" stuff is nauseating.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

We need tabs... Pcmanfm has had tabs for ages and is developed by one man. And it's his hobby.

I can't live without tabs.

Then you shall have tabs (Probably) (http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap). (Scroll down to the Nautilus section).

Daimaru: I (think I) understand your suggestion fine, but my issue with it is how such a change could blend with GTK's current behaviour. It cannot be implemented the exact same way as in Windows, because GNOME employs a very different feel around dragging and dropping content that I am concerned would fit poorly with what ammounts to clicking through rows in a list.

It can be argued that the other columns in Nautilus' list view are simply supporting information and thus could be practically seen as whitespace, but there are still a few issues:
-The Name column is also just supporting information (though that's a rather geeky, overly technical argument)
-The Name column can be turned off (easily fixed by locking it on, but potentially damaging for some strange use case)
-The Name column does not have to be the first column

Alas, there are some potential regressions to take a look at!

Obviously, I have a very weird viewpoint on all of this ;)

[Lostincyberspace]

wow, that is pretty neat, although that "bling" stuff is nauseating.
the only thing I really like about it is it's moving backgrounds.

[daimaru]

Obviously, I have a very weird viewpoint on all of this ;)
LOL obviously you understand more about the workings of GTK than me. Maybe it's a stupid idea of mine, but I hope you'd still like to see it implemented :tongue:
And maybe you can explain it to the people that are involved in the development process.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Oh, I can assure you, I have very little idea what GTK looks like under the hood. (Looked at it one day, then I realized I was in over my head and hurriedly found another path). Just that a bit of poking about suggests that this could be a tad fiddly simply from a usability perspective. Still, white space could solve it... maybe where those expander arrows go!

The only thing powering my thoughts, really, is that I have fallen in love with GNOME's ideal methodology.

[meanburrito920]

This is probably because I'm a keyboard guy, but I love using shift and ctrl, I even use them with arrow keys (I really dont like using a mouse). I personally dont see an issue with having to hit one key and clicking twice, instead of dragging the mouse around. Maybe it's just personal preference...

[futz]

lol how can you stand any other view than detailed or list view ???
You got that right. Icon view is for retards. :mrgreen:

[daimaru]

ok guys thank you for your answers. I would mark this thread as solved, but since the new forum is in its infancy and that still does not work i guess its going to stay open. so enjoy posting on and on and on :popcorn:

[vexorian]

move to icon view if you want to select multiple files.

And Microsoft probably copied it from something else.

I detected an off topic E17 plug in the first page... E17 remains cool though.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

It wouldn't hurt to bring this up with the GNOME folks on the Nautilus or GTK mailing lists (http://mail.gnome.org/), or on the GNOME bug tracker (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/). It could even get somewhere on Launchpad (http://launchpad.net) if you don't feel like dabbling in the UI nightmare that is Bugzilla.
Sorry, I would do it myself, but I need sleep! Besides, it's your bug; there are karma points to be won!

It definitely is inconsistent that one cannot select multiple files via mouse in list mode, and this is the case everywhere. (I just don't think Microsoft's implementation does it quite right as a solution).

[Wolki]

It wouldn't hurt to bring this up with the GNOME folks on the Nautilus or GTK mailing lists (http://mail.gnome.org/), or on the GNOME bug tracker (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/).

It's already in the GNOME Bugzilla, http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=138931 seems to be the correct one. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94618 is related as well (second issue daimaru mentions). It might already be on Launchpad as well.

[geoken]

You got that right. Icon view is for retards. :mrgreen:

Or for people who are able to mentally sort objects which are placed on a grid and don't need them to be laid on in a simple, 1 dimentional row.:)

[-Phi-]

For the record, Thunar lets you drag select files in Detailed List mode, if the file you start on isn't already selected (if it is already selected, it drags it). The feature actually ends up annoying me because I try to drag something into a folder and it selects everything in-between instead...

- Phi

[days_of_ruin]

lol list-view.

[days_of_ruin]

Or for people who are able to mentally sort objects which are placed on a grid and don't need them to be laid on in a simple, 1 dimentional row.:)

+1